My Lover,
I sit on the balcony with the wind moving through the trees. I hear the leaves, a thousand points of friction, rustled by invisible force. Sitting in silence is enough. Things want to be felt and seen; echoes want to reverberate.
A vision of a rupture on a black canvas: a gash of colors and lights, like a nebula, where stars are born. I feel like I’ve been sitting under the stars on a warm summer night, in awe. That has been sort of the mood here.
***
I sit in the kitchen and smoke. The dishwasher is running with a soothing rhythm. Pumping water, probably. Spraying the dishes, I imagine. Nobody can say for certain. The dishwasher performs its function behind closed doors. Nobody has ever seen what goes on while it’s on (same as with fridges). It lives a life of unseen service. I like to think it is content, nonetheless, to do its job well and renew our culinary paraphernalia to be clean and fresh, again.
I wrestle with what to convey to You, what to send out through time and space (see the paragraph above). A parade of cliches, metaphors, images and comparisons rolls through my mind. I toy with phenomenological reports, intimate analyses, (not so) subtle externalisations, vague tangents meant to transcend the issue like a home-baked Zen koan.
I spend time making music, playing guitar, singing. It feels right: this is needed. I had a moment yesterday, composing in a medievalish vibe, where I realized how alone I was there, in the realm of that music. I am deeply grateful that I ventured there, on this monday, because I had been scared to go there, afraid of this aloneness.
I sense strength and courage, springing from a fresh source I have no word for: I’ve tried hunger, lust, yearning (for life). But it feels less ego-bound, more bountiful: curiosity, interest, awe, love, joy, gratitude. Somehow I feel the urge to be extra careful with putting this feeling-place-something into words. Maybe I see the futility. Notably, the attempt also brought the words cosmic and sacred to my lips, the latter of which isn’t really in my personal vocabulary.
In a sense, I feel as naked as a baby, my little heart aflutter, surrounded by everything, in quiet awe, alive.
***
In the kitchen, again. Surfacing for a moment from the stream of 10000 things. I dived into the old hussle, swam among my issues, dealt with problems. The Feeling changes, softens. I do not lament it (yet), recognizing that it is futile to hold on to it in this way. But now, when I surface and try to come back to it, it is still here: in the silence. I am grateful.
I had a conflict today with my roommate. I handled it poorly in the beginning, then I did pretty well. In the end, we were talking from softer places. It brough us closer. You came up. I feel insecure now, thinking back about how I talked about You, our meeting and what I’ve been feeling since. I used a vocabulary of superlatives… I-have-nevers… explosions even. But I think it’s ok for me to flail a little. I have worked hard to let myself act on the deep desire to describe how I’m feeling.
I hear people singing, choir-like. I’m reminded of something I read: The pose of the writer has an effect on the words. I sit inside, and look out into world. (Nietzsche, apparently, said he could smell the stale farts and stuffy unaired rooms in some philosophical writings, or something to that effect.) As I listen to the sounds, I imagine being among the singers, but apart, never fully belonging, caught in a melancholy which has been in the Feeling as well.
Thoughts and feelings also have a directionality in time. This feels like joy for the future but also some kind of sadness — maybe over the simple fact that I’m not with You physically. I can’t quite figure it out, but the sadness ends with a smile.
I imagine myself in the future, thinking back to the two nights with You. This brings a sense of being a child, funny enough. Little children, all of us — naked and furious, often scared, living on heuristics. Stuck with this process of making sense of confusion, sifting, distilling, combining. Clarity? Catharsis? Transcendence? I’m not sure about any of them. Here, and there, maybe, in grams. I don’t buy them wholesale. Now, in this image of future recollection of our loving and connection, I feel a visceral fear: there is nothing in this but what I make of it. Transience and responsibility in loving. Sad and terrified knowing that an end is there, to everything; sensing that there is a task — maybe the most important task — to ease suffering, to spread love, to remember, to remember as long as possible and to act on it against all odds; and a deep insecurity: I can(not) do it.
***
After a scorching day of labor, every vein running dry, I’m left with sadness and the wish to sleep and regenerate. I imagine your face. A sliver of a smile. Love (what better word?) breaks through the miles of ocean, echoing, bubbling up, suffusing and soothing me. You and my other Lover, smiling at me gently. I am grateful. Somewhere, I know that everything will be alright. And somehow, thrumming underneath it, an echo of an ending. Almost always I rub up against this when I ponder my loved ones. It seems to be woven into these thoughts, or into me.
***
Late sunday morning. Hungover, pressure in my head, flesh and spirit tender. I woke up distressed. heavy and tired. last night i caught just enough sleep to feel how tired i really am.
I make a tea and have a journaling session. I put on music, get a little distracted. It helps, I feel lighter. At least for a minute. I stir and find my body shifting back again, seemingly reminding me: I am supposed to feel stressed and worried. I try to figure it out. My attention drifts away. My life seems messy. Like a big, unsolvable problem. — Obviously, a stressful perspective. I sense in me a fear of this messiness, the loss of control, the dashing of expectations, the clash of desires against reality. I truly want to learn to deal with this fear.
I go through this letter; I add and cut — roughly, because I want to get this done today; I try to let the words take me back to where they were written — to feel once again, what incited me to write them; they take different paths — but it’s like the terrain stays the same; I find yet a new song for an ancient sorrow, add a line to the old poem whose meter I seem to be stuck with for now; I try to stay true, to highlight the signal in the noise and yet own the noise; I try to shed away concerns about form, grace and what might and might not be palatable for You…
The editing process seems like the chaotic trying that is life itself. When I see it, it hits me, and I cry. When the snot comes, the baby-thesis feels palpably, mostily proven. I giggle and get up to make lunch.